Joseph Saunders
Analyst · Wells Fargo
Thanks, Jack, and as always, thanks to all of you for joining us today. Visa began fiscal 2011 with another very strong quarter, delivering net operating revenues of over $2.2 billion, a 14% increase over last year. As has been the case for several quarters now, these revenue gains were driven by double-digit growth in payments volume, cross border volume and Visa-processed transactions from across the globe. Net income for the quarter was $884 million, a 16% increase over the prior year. This equates to diluted earnings per share of $1.23, a 20% increase over the first quarter of 2010. As previously reported, early in October, we funded the litigation escrow by an additional $800 million, which has the same effect as the share repurchase. Later that month, our board authorized a $1 billion repurchase program, which we actively executed upon during the first quarter by buying over $300 million worth of shares. So we're off to a good start in terms of returning excess cash to our shareholders. Byron will provide more additional detail on the repurchase. Nearly one year ago at Visa's inaugural Investor Day, we laid out our long-term strategy that would drive continued revenue growth. Key to this strategy is maintaining a dual focus on growing usage of our core products, which drives the majority of our revenue today while simultaneously advancing an aggressive innovation agenda to accelerate long-term growth through new platforms and channels. During that same event, we also made a commitment to further diversify our business, including a long-term goal of ensuring our revenues more fully reflect Visa's global presence. We continue to make steady progress on achieving our aspiration of having more than 50% of revenue come from outside the United States by 2015. Consistent with that objective, in this quarter, just over 60% of total revenue growth came from Rest of World. VisaNet is the key asset that enables Visa to deliver on these innovations and revenue diversity commitments. As we invest in long-term growth initiatives, we will maintain the unmatched scale, reliability, security and convenience that we deliver today. Our competitive advantages in this regard are significant. VisaNet's processing infrastructure is unparalleled in its capabilities, enabling us to deploy those assets and drive more volume and more value to networks and its participants. Importantly, the flexibility of VisaNet allows us to lead the evolution of our industry towards payment into new technologies and form factors that will spur the future growth of this industry. To illustrate that point, I'd like to provide you with our most recent updates on key initiatives. First, we will look at eCommerce and Money Transfer, two critical channels to driving usage of our products. Growing our eCommerce business remains a top priority for Visa and will be an area of increased emphasis in fiscal 2011. Our investments in this category to date are yielding results as we saw 25% year-over-year growth in eCommerce payments volume globally in Q1. CyberSource enables us to accelerate growth of the eCommerce category overall by extending Visa's capability to deliver innovation to merchants, consumers and partners with services such as fraud management and payment security management. CyberSource got off to a great start in 2011, delivering 40% year-over-year growth in billable transactions in the first quarter. We have also made progress in driving future growth by continuing to expand merchant relationships with new wins such as Hertz and Tommy Hilfiger. We also signed up LAN Airlines thanks to a lead from our Visa LAC team that demonstrates the synergies that exist for building the business through shared lead generation. We've also begun making targeted investments to expand CyberSource's international footprint, including adding personnel to our existing office in Singapore, establishing a legal entity in Brazil and assessing the landscape in our CEMEA region. While the international build out will take time, we are excited about the opportunities for growth. Money Transfer is an example of our commitment to leading the evolution in payments, giving consumers a new channel to use their credit, debit and prepaid products. In fact, today, I'm pleased to announce substantial progress on that front. We have expanded our partnership with MoneyGram to introduce the first cash-to-Visa account program for remittances from the United States to Mexico, which according to the World Bank is the largest remittances corridor in the world. Utilizing the strength of our global network, this program allows consumers in the U.S. to visit any of the 35,000 MoneyGram locations to send funds directly to any Visa credit, debit or prepaid account in Mexico in a fast, secure, reliable and cost-effective way. Money Transfer holds significant potential for our business, both in the U.S. and globally. In addition to our strong partnership with MoneyGram, we are currently engaged with other leaders in the field to pursue additional opportunities. As a leader in product innovation, prepaid is an area where we will continue to invest and foster global growth. In the U.S., our efforts to support issuers of major government prepaid programs continue. With the Bank of America, we recently launched a significant prepaid disbursement card program for the state of California Employment Development Department. Additionally, the state of New York recently announced the launch of a Visa prepaid pilot program with Chase bank that will streamline how payments are made to parents receiving adoption subsidies. Adoptive parents now have the option to receive those funds through a Visa-branded prepaid card issued by Chase instead of receiving their funds by check. More and more, we see prepaid making a case for itself in every pocket of the globe and particularly, in emerging markets. This is true from Botswana and Georgia, two countries that recently partnered with Visa to introduce their first prepaid product solutions to India and Pakistan, which are further along the payments development curve. In India, Visa developed the payment solution for the Unique Identification Authority of India to support that country's massive national program to issue unique identification numbers to local residents. This program has the benefits of deepening our relationship with the State Bank of India, potentially growing the number of transactions on Visa's network and advancing our goal of financial inclusion for underbanked individuals worldwide. And in Pakistan, we are gratified to see the progress that has been made since we joined the government of Pakistan and United Bank Limited, Bank Alfalah and Habib Bank Limited to launch a national aid disbursement card program after last summer's floods. More than 1.4 million cards have been issued, delivering $317 million in humanitarian aid, one of the fastest rollouts of a disbursement program of this kind. All of us who have been reading the news have seen a clear build up of excitement and attention around mobile payments, and we absolutely agree. The convergence of payments with mobile devices is a significant development in the evolution of digital currency and a top priority for Visa. Visa's presence in mobile payments is already well established worldwide with 25 payment programs in 19 countries worldwide. We expect international markets will continue to be amongst the fastest adopters of this innovative payments technology. That said, we announced the commercial availability of mobile contactless payments in the United States and in other select markets. Last quarter, I said that we were standing on the threshold. And now for the first time in Visa's history, a mobile contactless payment solution is officially included in the list of Visa-compliant products available for use by our client financial institutions. Wells Fargo has joined Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and U.S. Bank in piloting the technology with their customers. The solution works with existing contactless payment terminals installed at retail outlets worldwide, enabling Visa account holders to simply hold up their phone to pay for purchases. We recognize that the U.S. market is complex and will require an inclusive approach that addresses the specific needs of all stakeholders. However, I believe Visa's network and payment expertise offers significant competitive advantage over new entrants, and I'm confident that we will play a key role in the evolution of mobile payments in the U.S. Visa's presence in the mobile channel also offers opportunity to build deeper relationships with existing customers as well as connect new participants with Visa through value-added products and services. An example is our recent launch of the Visa Mobile iPhone application, now available as a free download from the iTunes app store. The application delivers customized discounts and is tailored to consumer's preferences and physical location, which enables merchants to reach consumers in a targeted way and gives consumers access to exclusive deals not available to other shoppers. Security is another area in which we are evolving and differentiating Visa through innovation. Just last month, we announced significant improvements to VisaNet security capabilities, which will dramatically improve our ability to detect and prevent global electronic payments fraud. By enhancing the underlying processing platform that powers Visa's advanced authorization offering, we are enabling our issuers to isolate fraudulent transactions from legitimate ones in real-time. And historical data tells us that this could help identify an incremental 29% of the global fraud annually. Not only is this applicable domestically but more importantly, in cross border applications, where you have higher incidences of fraud and so have greater levels of denied authorizations. Enhanced measures will allow for a greater number of transactions. It's often easy to take our reliable, secured global processing capabilities for granted. But the reality is that as technology enables new payment platforms and competitors, our processing excellence will differentiate and advantage us competitively. So in that regard, I'm pleased to report that we had a flawless peak season of transactions processing, which means that we achieved 100% success in authorizing and settling all transactions between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. This marks the 18th year in a row that we have hit this mark. That captures some of our most recent highlights and there will be more to come. Overall, we believe that we are operating from a position of strength, fully utilizing our assets and points of differentiation. Our competitive advantages are significant and will continue to enable us to deliver the payment in commerce solutions that consumers and merchants want. Finally, I'd like to close with our thoughts about the recent legislative developments in the United States. With respect to the Federal Reserve's initial recommendations related to the debit provision of the Dodd-Frank Act, we believe the government is engaging in price mix into the benefit of virtually no one. The debit price control legislation has been policy and requires thorough review and revision before potential implementation. To that end, we're working with the entire industry to help the 112th Congress and the Federal Reserve better understand how the provisions create significant unintended consequences that will harm consumers, the economy and financial institutions of all sizes, even if those institutions were supposedly exempt from the regulation. Because of these threats, particularly the harm to the consumers, we believe Congress should re-examine the Durbin provisions and delay implementation to more carefully consider the complexities and unintended consequences of the provisions. Joint federal agencies should also provide an objective assessment of the impacts and present their findings to Congress for review and debate. We are encouraged by the increasing number of voices speaking up about the unintended consequences of this legislation, most notably the authors of the financial reform, Representative Frank and former Senator Dodd. We believe it is noteworthy that Representative Frank has indicated a willingness to work with those who are similarly concerned and amend the debit provisions to allow financial institutions to recover full costs associated with want running a reliable and secure debit network. I've never seen the industry, including banks of all sizes, this engaged and coalesced around working together to improve the outcome. We and others in the industry are looking forward to participating in Representative Bachus' proposed hearing on this legislation, currently planned for mid-February. As we have seen, the more this issue is debated, the more questions are raised about who will really benefit in the end. While we don't know yet the final rules, Visa is working aggressively to protect the interests of consumers and our clients, and we'll support the industry's activities to shape the legislation that impacts community banks, credit unions and larger banks alike. But no matter the ultimate outcome, I want to say to you that we remain confident in our ability to deliver strong revenue and earnings growth over the long term. We have developed a priority set of business strategies and are ready to deploy them when the law is finalized, allowing us to utilize our people and our assets to drive us successfully towards our goals. As you can appreciate, I think it's inappropriate to elaborate further on these strategies at this time for a host of reasons. And now over to Byron.